The present invention relates to the field of presence determination and, more particularly, to zone based presence determination via voiceprint location awareness.
Locating personnel within large facilities (e.g., workplaces) is becoming increasingly important to daily business operations. Operations can often include organizing meetings, securing resources, and coordinating personnel activities. For example, high rise office buildings (e.g., multi-story offices) often house many company divisions within a single building which can include hundreds of personnel distributed over many floors. Frequently, managing business operations within these large facilities can be daunting. That is, as ubiquitous computing (e.g., mobile computers) allows the personnel to move freely within these large facilities, determining the location (e.g., presence) can be time consuming and difficult. Facilities which lack presence solutions often resort to manual coordinating efforts such as contacting personnel directly to determine the personnel location. These manual efforts can reduce productivity and frequently result in frustration of personnel attempting to conduct business operations.
Alternatively, facilities can be outfitted with traditional presence solutions. Traditional presence solutions frequently rely on Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), Ultrasound, Wireless Fidelity (WiFi), Global Positioning System (GPS), and other technologies to determine personnel location. These solutions typically involve using a uniquely identified tag which must be worn by personnel (e.g., authorized persons, visitors, residents, etc.) for presence systems to recognize and identify the personnel's location. Drawbacks of this system often include inaccurate association of tags to individuals, cost of acquiring tags for individuals within a facility, limited battery life of tags, lost tags, replacement expenses of lost tags, and inconsistent usage of tags. These drawbacks can quickly create significant hurdles to adopting invaluable presence technologies within these large facilities.